I gave up drinking when my wife only had three months to live

A shock health diagnosis lead one man to rethink his drinking in order to support his wife. Photo / Getty Images

George gave up alcohol to support his wife of 14 years during her final months. He explains why now, as a single dad, he’s staying sober.

As I held my wife Imogen’s frail hand – too frail and weak for her 44 years – on her last night of life, I had never been more clear-minded.

The weeks leading up to her eventual death from stage-four bowel cancer had been the most lucid of my life. As a theatre director-turned-leadership coach, I was used to being alert and aware, but this was different.

Three months earlier, l had made a choice. When the drugs had finally stopped working and Imogen was told she was beyond saving, I decided, for the first time since my inaugural beer at 16, to stop drinking.

What little time we had left – the doctors could give us nothing definite, only an estimate – was too precious for me to dull my senses with alcohol, to soften the hard corners of grief with groggy mornings and tired afternoons.

If I suddenly had to drive her to A&E or take my three children, Arthur, 11 and 9-year-old twins Audrey and Orson, to their grandparents’ at a moment’s notice, I couldn’t risk being over the limit. Plus, I knew the depressive after-effects of my typical weekly units – the lethargy, the apathy, the short fuse, the anxiety – could sink me. And it’s not like I could relax or socialise anyway. I spent that time relentlessly fetching pain relief and straining to hold our household together, while keeping us afloat financially and spending what little time there was left with my love.

Strange as it may sound, those last three weeks I sat at her bedside, watching her mighty spirit cling to life as the cancer dragged her withered form determinedly towards death, have proved to be the most precious of my life.

Imogen took her final breath on Wednesday, March 27, 2024 at 4.28am. As I held her in my arms, feeling the deepest pain I have ever known, I was at least grateful to know that the anguish was not contorted by alcohol but completely real and wholly my own.

I had tried and failed to quit drinking for years. My relationship with booze was, if not dysfunctional, then definitely, on balance, unhelpful. But drinking came with the territory of our creative careers.

Imogen and I met through a shared passion for theatre. Romance for us was a bottle of wine over a new script and a shared spreadsheet, followed by a show and a nightcap back in our flat in Brixton, London.

Alcohol consumption often increases after bereavement, but for some, grief leads to complete sobriety. Photo / 123RF

As I carved out a career as a director and she as a producer, we were never far from the offer of a pint or a G&T. Our courtship was conducted in a haze of press night wine. Then a few years later, parents to a toddler and baby twins, our social lives became “Netflix and chill” – with an ice-cold four-pack. Lockdown, when it arrived, was like one long after-hours lock-in.

By that point, drinking had become a hobby. I joined the wine and malt whisky societies; became a connoisseur of southeast London’s microbreweries; and expanded my taste into Spanish sherries and Italian vermouths. The end-of-workday beer, the wine with dinner, the whisky nightcap, the summer whites and the party negronis, the Saturday sherry and Sunday Guinness. The post-binge Bloody Mary, just to take the edge off. The week was planned out according to the appropriate plonk.

We emerged from the pandemic bursting at the seams of our one-and-a-half-bedroom Herne Hill home and decided, after 15 years living in the capital together, to move to the seaside. We relocated to the North Kent coast, bought a house with stairs, got a dog and began what we thought was the next chapter of our lives together.

Then, barely a year after we arrived, Imogen saw some blood in her stool.

She was dismissed by the GP three times before being referred. I was standing on our back patio sweeping leaves the day she called me from the colonoscopy and told me through tears: “It’s not good news, baby.”

The two years that followed were filled with chemotherapy, surgery, radiation and alternative treatments for her – and booze for me. What began as pleasure and became a pastime had settled into a pattern before finally morphing into a prop. I would never have called myself an alcoholic; I could function all day without drinking and I spent the odd midweek night sober. But it was a reward, a distraction, an escape. And it helped numb the pain; so why stop?

Then, after two years of courageous fight, the day came to sit outside the oncologist’s office and be told her cancer was now terminal.

I wept into her lap and thought about the promise I’d made to her 14 years before: through sickness and health ‘til death do us part.

That was the moment. As soon as I knew Imogen would be facing the end of her life, that I would be responsible for ensuring she died as peacefully as possible, and that I would then awake to find myself a single parent, I finally had a reason to quit.

In the months after Imogen died, I came to realise if anything is enough to turn you to drink, it’s the realities of life as a solo parent.

The bereavement was brutal and that was just the baseline.

The "grief gap" refers to the extra pressures men often face as widowed single parents. Photo / 123RF

On top of that, there was navigating three children’s grief, the financial pressure to replace Imogen’s bread-winning earnings, the logistics of shopping and cooking and cleaning and school and clubs and social lives. Add knowing I have to be here until they all turn 18 at the very least – the terrifying thought of leaving them orphaned – and you can see how anyone would be tempted to lean daily on drink as a coping mechanism.

So in the wake of her leave, I built a raft of habits for keeping myself afloat and staying sober. I told the kids I didn’t drink anymore, to keep me duty-bound. I wore a black elastic band on my little finger as a reminder to myself and as a public display of abstinence. I substituted my daily intake with 0% beer (lovely) and alcohol-free wine (awful). I said to myself and others “I don’t drink” as opposed to “I’ve given up drinking”, to keep it an active choice, not a denial of pleasure. I also started a weekly Substack called On Coping, where I wrote about my experience of living soberly on the sidelines of cancer.

Honestly? It has been incredibly hard.

There have been days I couldn’t get out of bed. Or when the loneliness was crushing. Or when I was literally pulling my hair out in frustration. On those days, I thought about the pleasurably numbing effect of a large tumbler of single malt; or the dopamine hit of sinking a four-pack of Stella.

There have also been birthdays, summer holidays, anniversaries, Christmas – each of which I would traditionally have marked with its appropriate alcoholic accompaniment.

Arriving home from work one day a few weeks ago I felt, for a few hours at least, that I missed wine as much as I missed my wife.

While my family and friends have been supportive, I suspect they also feel something has been lost.

My dad, for example, was gutted when he heard. Beer was one of the things we talked about. My gentle mockery of his poor taste in pale ale and our playful criticisms of mass brewed bitter was what we bonded over.

Similarly, my oldest friends from school and uni – with whom I would walk the North Wales hills before long pub sessions – were both secretly sad those times had passed and quietly dismayed at my decision to give up what they hadn’t.

I stopped relaxing and I didn’t socialise. My day began at 6am and was filled with working and parenting and more working until one or two in the morning. Managing three children’s needs was complex before their mum died; afterwards, borderline Byzantine. Bottom line: they needed me to be present, clear-headed and attentive – then, now and for as long as possible.

As we approach the first anniversary of Imogen’s death, I still think about booze every day. I just haven’t done anything about those yearnings, yet.

I honestly think if I hadn’t quit when I did, in January last year, I wouldn’t have made it this far. Stopping drinking has kept me functioning. But there’s a cost. And, for now at least, being sober is no fun at all.

Giving up alcohol can improve sleep, energy levels and mental clarity within just a few weeks. Photo / 123RF

However, the most surprising thing about giving up alcohol has been how it has changed my relationship with negative feelings. Despite the gargantuan effort it takes to make it through to the evening, the depths of despair my grief drags me to daily and the willpower required to resist just one drink – I am not sad.

Exhausted, heartbroken, overwhelmed – yes. But sad, no. Because never before have I known a sense of purpose like the one I now feel. I promised my darling wife on her deathbed that I would look after our children. That I would give them the best approximation of the life we had begun to build. That I would hold on and stay the course. That I would cope.

I intend to keep my word. And honouring that promise is only possible, for me at least, because I am clear-eyed, full hearted and feeling my emotions. Despite those feelings being full of difficulty, they are rooted in the memory of Imogen and my commitment to our children. They are wholly unmasked by the dopamine of drunkenness and untainted by the hollowness of a hangover. They are real. And they are mine.

I know what I need to do. And to do it, I need to stay sober.